This Lord of the Rings article contains spoilers for The Rings of Power.
If you’ve already watched the shocking season 1 finale of The Rings of Power, it should come as no surprise that the Lord of the Rings series has plans to really dig into its main villain when the show returns for a second season. In fact, while speaking to Empire, Halbrand/Sauron actor Charlie Vickers shared that he has already filmed an important sequence that will define a bit of the Dark Lord’s backstory on the series.
“You know how we see Galadriel at the start of Season 1? Part of the sequence that I’ve shot is the early story of Sauron in the next season, and that’s the shot but I’m not gonna go into specifics,” Vickers teases.
Even though Vickers and series showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay didn’t give much information on just how far they were going into Sauron’s past in season 2, this reveal still hints at the possibility of us seeing what Sauron was up to during the First Age of Middle-earth. While a lot of Sauron’s backstory before the Second Age is detailed in J.R.R Tolkien’s posthumous work The Silmarillion, which the Tolkien estate still owns the rights to and Amazon can’t outright adapt, there are still certain elements that The Rings of Power can depict and elaborate on in their own way with the works they do have the right to use, including the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings.
The Rings of Power may not be able to show the army of werewolves that Sauron created in the First Age after his siege of the Elvish island Tol Sirion nor his vampire herald Thuringwethil (which is such a shame), but it is likely that they will be able to show some of Sauron’s time as a lieutenant to Morgoth, the first Dark Lord of Middle-earth. Considering that the series has already referenced the Great Battle of the First Age, the war where Sauron killed Galadriel’s (Morfydd Clark) brother, it doesn’t seem entirely outside the realm of possibility for them to show some of the events that led up to this war as well as their aftermath.
Sauron was forced into hiding at the end of the First Age because his master Morgoth was defeated. Morgoth is the reason that the Trees of Valinor were destroyed in the First Age, which is why the Elves have been growing weaker in The Rings of Power, hence their fascination with mithril. While there’s no way to know for sure thus far whether or not Morgoth himself will feature in Sauron’s “early story” as depicted in The Rings of Power – I know better than to cry “Mephisto,” or in this case “Morgoth,” before it’s actually confirmed – the Great Battle seems like the perfect way to show Sauron’s journey before his first fall to where we see him now.
Since The Rings of Power is setting up Galadriel to be his equal in the light, it would make sense for Sauron’s season 2 sequence to be similar to her opening sequence in season 1. Whereas season 1 begins with the end of the First Age and the Great Battle from Galadriel’s perspective, it would be interesting to then see it from Sauron’s. Galadriel spends centuries looking for proof of Sauron’s existence, so it seems only fitting to see some of what he was up to during that time.
The first season of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.